PACCAR reviews

3.6

63% would recommend to a friend

(1,039 total reviews)
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Preston Feight

72% approve of CEO

52% positive business outlook

PACCAR has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 1,039 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The PACCAR employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Manufacturing industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
2.0
Apr 20, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Custom heavy trucks are very challenging engineering subjects. With each truck being essentially unique, some very complicated engineering challenges emerge, and these are very satisfying to work on and solve (sometimes). The huge inertia of the company can be frustratiing, but it also makes it rather easy to stand out, to introduce new engineering techniques, and to pioneer new techlogies, which can be satisfying and a good resume padder. You can get a more varied work experience at PACCAR than just about anywhere, if you are persistant. Also, they have lots of money, and sometimes you can get them to spend it on engineering tools.

Cons

Management rules by fear. Each level of management is trained to be afraid of the next level, so most of everybody's time is spent making sure that nothing happens that will displease the next level of management. The CEO rules with snide comments and caustic remarks such as you might have heard from an English lord in the 1800's. Way too much emphasis is put on proper dress, such that you could be a complete idiot who dressed nicely, and get prmoted time after time. Agree with the executives and always wear a suit, and you don't need a functional brain. Finally, PACCAR has no new product developement capability at all. A new truck for PACCAR is moving the air filters inside the hood and streamlining the fenders and bumper. They are successful pumping out conservative products to a conservative market, and problems tend to get evolved out of the product over the 30 year life of each product. Don't go there if you like to innovate.

3.0
Apr 1, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Solid company that will weather the recession. Low turnover provides depth of experience to draw from. Interesting opportunities to work with colleagues world-wide. Resonable benefits. Strong ethic for quality work and products. Good quality people to work with on the division level.

Cons

The corporate culture is very old school - hierarchical and control-oriented. Too much micromanaging by senior managers lead to delays, much wasted effort and poor outcomes. Slow advancement with limited opportunites to move up to higher level jobs. Favoritism by directors in providing opportuities for advancement to relatively few persons.

3.0
Jan 31, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pretty good benefits / Opportunities to move between departments or divisions

Cons

I've had to work for way too many incompetent supervisors/managers who don't know anything about managing people. They are good at telling their employees they are "the boss" and "do as told not as I do". They also make sure to hire someone who is less smarter than them and they always emphasize "go through the chain of command" even if it wastes valuable time. PACCAR really need to start having the employees evaluate the managers to weed out the bad ones (insecure / incompetent / control-freak).

Viewing 1027 - 1029 of 1,039 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,213 PACCAR reviews submitted anonymously by PACCAR employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if PACCAR is right for you.